Mocking Michael Jackson in my mother’s house followed a routine. You could go on and wonder about his butchered face and some of his other  eccentricities. She would patiently listen and even smile at a good joke at the gloved one’s expense. But when she said the following line, all teasing had to end.

“Say what you want, but you can’t take away his talent.”

I imagine her in tears this week. She never met Jackson, didn’t attend any concerts, but kept her heart open for the kid from Gary, Indiana. Hard not to really.  She saw him grow up. Adored the  boy leading his older brothers and required silence  whenever they were on television. Took me to see The Wiz and only talked about his performance as the Scarecrow and  Lena Horne as Glinda (Happy birthday Ms. Horne).  When Thriller made him the King of Pop, she went along for the ride and showed a mother’s pride every time Jackson moon walked.

If she were still alive I would be on the dutiful search for mementos. She would be good enough to note any complaints about my errand boy status, but would be  gently insistent about what was to be purchased.  Of course his records would be getting played all the time–she left this world  proud of her Fisher stereo system. Not sure if this is more me than her, but I think she would wonder why Papa Jackson keeps talking when cameras are around.

Talking about the newly dead through the dead is an unseemly trick. I have my Jackson moments (loved his afro in Destiny), but they are neither visceral nor personal. His death only makes sense through the imagined prism of my mother’s reaction, but like Karl Marx quipped in the under appreciated novel the Oxherding Tale “truth is someone.”

A special plea to my Republican friends: listen it’s your party and you can elect whomever you care to, but if a GOP state representatives wants to issue a proclamation blaming the ills of the economy on gays and lesbians, it’s time to show the crazies the door.